


The Memory Keeper

by webofdreams89



Category: DCU, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Dreams vs. Reality, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/M, M/M, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 09:01:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/webofdreams89/pseuds/webofdreams89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy’s dreams are so almost-tangible that he wakes with the whisper of forgotten names and faces hot on his tongue before they fade like an old heartbeat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Memory Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> There isn't anything to explicit in the story, but I rated it Mature for canon drug use, so Trigger Warning just in case!
> 
> So yeah, this is sort of pre-New 52, and Roy has memories of people and events that no one else seems to remember. I was trying for something a tiny bit experimental or odd or something. This is the result and I think I'm happy with the result. So yeah, hope you enjoy!

_“Memories warm you up on the inside. But they also tear you apart.”_ -Haruki Murakami

\--

At night, Roy dreams. Sure, most people do, but Roy doesn’t dream like normal people. He dreams in memories he doesn’t understand; vivid, rich, and so almost tangible that when he wakes in the morning, he has the whisper of forgotten names and faces hot on his tongue before they fade like an old heartbeat. 

Most of the time, they are just blurry faces running, fighting, screaming, but sometimes he can make them out. Sometimes he sees himself firing arrows in a yellow hat with a feather, sees Dick in short pants with a zipline, Garth, who he doesn’t really know, making whirlpools. And there are others. A girl with long black hair and a lasso like Wonder Woman, a girl he thinks he loves, and a boy with bright red hair that could run like the Flash. 

He’s so sure that he knows them, but in the morning when he asks Ollie, he gives Roy a sad look and tells him not to put so much stock into his dreams.

He tries not to, but the dreams continue, become clearer as the years pass.

Roy wakes one morning, sweat pouring down his body, his heart pounding wildly. Dick stirs next to him, asking him if he’s okay. Roy wants to reply, to tell him that he’s dreaming of people that aren’t real again, but instead says the word, “Titans.”

\--

They are sitting in a coffee shop, Roy and Dick. Dick looks concerned, looks at the bags under Roy’s eyes, and reaches across the table for his hand. They don’t have that much time really before Dick has to take off for Bat business with Bruce. Roy wishes he could bury himself in Dick’s arms and stay there because it’s the only time he feels put together anymore.

“Do you…do you believe in reincarnation?” Roy asks suddenly, letting his other hand rest atop Dick’s.

Dick looks at him thoughtfully. He knows something is going on with Roy, but Roy can’t bring himself to address the dreams just yet, so this is as close as he will get.  
“Are you asking if I think we move on to another life after we die?” he asks, that hint of worry and confusion and maybe a bit of frustration in his voice.

As soon as Dick says it, Roy knows that it isn’t right, knows that it isn’t what happened to them. Not when people were just blipped from existence. The night before, he dreamed of two different Batgirls, beautiful girls, and they’re gone too, never born. 

But it’s as close as he can come up with at the moment.

“Yeah,” Roy says, “something like that.”

Dick says he isn’t sure, which was what Roy expected. He’s the only one that seems to remember them.

\--

The worst dream Roy has is always of a little girl. She’s small, nonthreatening, just a big smile and a tumble of soft black hair, but that isn’t what makes seeing her hurt so much. Roy can remember holding her in his arms, caressing her round cheeks, kissing her to sleep, and even in his dreams he knows she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

As he’s holding her, every single time she appears in Roy’s dreams, she turns her little head towards him and says, “Why did you forget me, Daddy?”

It always takes Roy days to work up the courage to sleep again.

\--

When Roy thinks about it now, he doesn’t know why he first did it. Working with Ollie and being a vigilante made the lines of what were good ideas and what were bad ones pretty clear, and this was so clearly a bad idea that Roy kind of hated himself. He hated even more what Dick would think. But he misses so much, misses people long gone but not dead. Without them, he feels lacking, only partially there. He thinks he’s already damned so what the hell, memory keeper to people even less corporeal than phantoms, and wonders if they were somehow damned too.

Roy’s friend helps him out, showing him how to do it himself for next time, and is pressing the needle into his skin. Roy finds himself overwhelmed by how calm he feels. They aren’t there in his head demanding attention, demanding retribution, the faces. 

For a little while at least, Roy is free.

\--

He wakes hysterical, thrashing around in bed, with Dick wide-eyed and shaking him. “Roy,” he’s saying over and over, “Roy, _wake up_!”

Roy isn’t entirely sure what he’s saying, but he knows it’s the faces, always their faces, and Dick looks disturbed, like he wishes shaking Roy was enough to snap him out of it. Roy wishes for the same thing.

“Roy, you have to calm down. None of that is real.” Dick’s voice is soft, scarily so, but Roy thinks it’s angry too. “It’s just in your head.”

“It _is_ real,” Roy insists, sitting up and taking Dick’s hand. “It’s all real. Or it was, but isn’t anymore. They’re gone now and things are different, we’re different.”

“Roy,” Dick says, but it’s little more of a hot gust of breath across Roy’s face.

“You don’t understand, Dick. Everything’s different now. Really, your parents died when you were nine and you were a cop in Bludhaven and you were Batman for a while when Bruce was dead. Tim was Robin and Barbara stays in a wheelchair and becomes someone called Oracle. I lose an arm and Ollie’s married to Black Canary.”

“Dinah Drake? The one that murdered her husband?” Dick asks, and his frown deepens.

“No, Dinah Lance. Superman’s married to Lois Lane and Barry Allen’s married to Iris West. She’s Wally’s aunt. Wally and his kids, and Donna, Stephanie, Cassandra. And Lian, my _daughter_. They existed too. They were real.” The last word stretches between them and it’s almost like Roy can actually feel as it settles.

“They aren’t real, Roy. It’s all just in your head. You’ve never had a daughter, and none of that ever happened,” Dick assures him. He pulls Roy close and cradles his head to his chest and Roy just wishes Dick could get it. 

Dick whispers over and over that he loves Roy. He knows about the heroin and offers to put Roy through rehab, begs him to talk to someone. But Roy can’t and he isn’t surprised when Dick eventually packs his things and leaves.

And Roy? He knows, the truth of it, of everything etched, branded into his brain. He knows that someone somewhere in the universe hit a big reset button on all their lives. He knows that he wasn’t supposed to remember, that he was supposed to forget just like Dick and everyone else, but for some reason he didn’t. He just keeps remembering and remembering and it never stops. 

So he again ties his arm off tightly, flicking the needle a few times with his fingers before sliding the needle into his vein. Roy slowly releases the heroin into his body and breaths out. 

Their faces have been pressed to his eyelids for years, but they begin slipping away, melting into something feasible Roy’s brain can process. Ghosts, flashes, memories, and then they’re gone, melting behind his eyes. Roy sags into his chair and, for once, feels at peace.

And at night, he no longer dreams.


End file.
